Wild Nothing, a one man project created by Jack Tatum, has come a long way since its beginnings in the apartment of a Virginia Tech student in 2009. After being asked by Captured Tracks to make a full-length album the summer before his senior year, he split his time the following semester between school and writing and recording. The record soon shot up in popularity, leading to a series of long tours, a move to New York City, and a second LP.
I had the opportunity to talk with the man behind the music, Jack Tatum, about his sudden rise to popularity and his writing process. Wild Nothing will be joining Local Natives on Thursday, September 19 at the Orpheum.
Did you know for a long time that you wanted to make music your career or was it something you just decided to go along with?
“I guess I more went along with it. I mean, I’ve played music for most of my life. My dad was a musician. He played guitar so he taught me how to play. Music has always been my preferred form of expression, but I never really thought of it as a potential career. I didn’t even think that was something possible for me. It seems to be, in terms of most people, something that you fall into rather than plan for. When I first started and when I made the first record, I really had no expectations. For me, there wasn’t a point I was trying to reach.”
That must have been surprising when your first album, Gemini, suddenly exploded in popularity.
“It was definitely strange. I started working on some of these songs four years ago, some even five years ago. I was still in school and I didn’t really know what I was doing, which was part of what made it interesting and what made people curious about it. It was just so out of nowhere, I think, for a lot of people, even though it wasn’t really out of nowhere for me. I’d been building towards it just in terms of writing my own songs, and a lot of them were songs that I might not have necessarily shared with anyone.”
You had to do a lot of self-editing on your first album. Can you tell me about that?
“Well, there are pros and cons to being the one that does everything. No matter what the product or the medium is, if you’re the only one on the project, ultimately, you’re gonna have yourself to answer for. I think it works to my advantage, and it’s largely what enabled me to get the point where I am now. It can be hard, though, when you don’t necessarily have anyone else to add or subtract from what you’re doing. I would still always get people’s opinions so it wasn’t a totally solitary thing. But it was more of a ‘do you like this or not’ scenario and less specifics about compositional aspects. It was more general. It’s something that I’m still dealing with, in terms of how I write music and how I create in general. Do I do it by myself or do I get other people involved?”
Which do you prefer?
“At this point, I don’t even know if there’s a preference. It was the only way that I really had to do things for a while. It’s always hard letting other people into the process when you have a specific vision because, a lot of times, it starts to feel like a compromise. I think if you approach something with other people from the get go, then it’s not so much a compromise — it’s more of a collaboration and a melding of ideas. If you’ve been working on a song, though, and you have particular ideas about how it should turn out then letting someone else into that world doesn’t always work. They might come up with a part and you’re like ‘no, no, that doesn’t match up with my idea of what it should be.’ It can be difficult.
“I think the older that I get, the more I’m kind of realizing that collaboration is such an important part of human expression. As I grow older, I’m feeling more and more interested in losing some selfishness.”
You worked with a producer on your second album. Did that feel like compromise?
“No, I knew with that record that I wanted to have that second opinion and the producer serves that role. I had written a lot of those songs before I even went into the studio, and it was definitely a much more thought-out process. I thought ‘OK, I’m gonna work on these songs for a while, and when I go into the studio I’ll have this bed of ideas that I’ll be able to base the album off of.’
“In terms of the songs and the way I wanted the songs to sound, a lot of the framework was already set up when I went in, but it kind of was the beginning of me trying to include other people. I had a producer and a drummer who could work with basic ideas of what I wanted to do and fill them out. It was good for me, because I’ve never really been someone who thinks particularly rhythmically. I’ve always been much more interested in melody, so it’s nice to have someone to take on that role other than me.”
You’ve put out a new EP since then, with quite a different style. Is that the direction you can see Wild Nothing going in or was it mostly experimentation?
“I’d say it was mostly experimentation. It is the direction I want to go in terms of setting a precedent for myself for not doing the same thing every time. It’s not necessarily that I was hoping to introduce a stylistic choice that would determine what I do next. It’s more to show people and show myself that I don’t necessarily have to keep doing the same thing. If I have certain inclinations within a song or I want to try something, I don’t want to have to worry about the repercussions of that. Not that being a songwriter has repercussions.” (laughs) “I just mean that I don’t feel like I need to be anything, or what people say that I am.”
Is it difficult, though, now that you have fans with expectations of what you should sound like?
“That’s always something you have to juggle. I think of myself just as someone who writes songs, but I hardly ever think of myself as a performer. It is part of what I do, though, and I still feel like I have a certain responsibility towards the people who’ve supported me and my music. I don’t like the idea of alienating people for the sake of alienating people. I have no interest in making music that’s gonna weird out my fans, but I definitely want to do what I’m feeling at the moment. If I find new inspiration or new influences I want to be able to share that. I feel like the right thing to do is evolve at a pace that makes sense for you as a musician. What I did on the EP is not so different from what I’ve done before, but at the same time I introduced a lot of new ideas.”
Does the collaboration come into play there, in the sense of having someone to bring you back if you’re going too far?
“Yeah, it’s nice to have someone to keep you in check. This EP was slightly strange because it was a bit of a return to me doing everything again. I had a drummer come in for a couple of the songs but for the most part it was all programmed drums. It was kind of like returning to Gemini, in a way. I went into a studio and had a producer and engineer, but I felt more like I was in control of how things were turning out with the EP.”
How has it been living in New York City for the last few years? Do you finally feel like a New Yorker?
“I feel like a New Yorker in that I feel like New York is my home. I don’t really even know what being a New Yorker means at this point. The cliché is totally true that hardly anyone who lives in New York is from here, especially with young creative people. I think of it as the place that I’ll be going back to now, but I don’t feel like I fit into any particular scene. I very much still feel connected to my upbringing in Virginia.”